Speak when you are spoken to.

If I had to train limousine drivers, I would start with what not to do. At the top of that list is not talking too much. In fact, less is almost always best, and the way to remember this is to only speak when spoken to.

Of the many differences between a taxi and a Town Car, the most important is the driver. Whereas taxi drivers can often be unstoppable chatterboxes, regaling their customers with whatever leaks from their brain, the chauffeur should be more circumspect. Pleasant and responsive, for sure, but restrained and calm too.

The way I look at it is that the customer is unlikely to have any interest in me. They probably think they know all about me anyway, or all they need to know. To them, I'm simple to categorize: Wombat's a limo driver. Seems like a good guy. And that's it.

So I try to look at it from their point of view, which is to say how everyone likes to look at the world: through their own biases and interests. When they do talk, I remove myself from the conversation, instead reflecting back to them the point of their comment, or feed on the substance behind the question. Being transparent is my aim.

Once you try it a few times, it's easy. Unless they specifically ask for personal experience, I remove the personal pronoun from my speech. Taxi drivers are all about the "I". Limo drivers are about the "you". We should affirm, or provide information, or ask pithy follow-ups or (with the right person) provide a wry comment.

Basically, it's about creating a comfortable experience where, for the length of the ride, they're the boss, and we're the minion.

Pounding the Road

The days surrounding Christmas were busy. The Boss's Limo Service hasn't seen this amount of activity in many months. His mood is buoyant and drivers are busy figuring the size of the next cheque. Job satisfaction is a nice ideal, but if you're working for minimum wage plus tips, it's about the money.

Not to say we don't do the very best we can by all customers. This Christmas season was punctuated by extreme weather in those places from which people fly to Florida, which means flight delays and messed-up schedules all around. And just when it looks like calm will return, some insane Nigerian fool with a dose of Yemeni bomb-pants decides to blow up a plane.

As a result, the charade of airport security moves one step further into the looking glass. Now we have snow delays and underpants inspection delays, which would have been avoided had anyone in charge taken seriously their oath to defend the American people as the Constitution requires. [link]

Amazingly, all our customers (so far) found themselves a chauffeur waiting at our designated meeting points at all the regional airports. They might have been six hours late, and sometimes folks expecting a Town Car found themselves in a stretch limousine, but it all got done.

The big question is whether business will slide back into its normally torporous state or if this is the start of something big.

Bang, You're Dead. Or not.

Far and away the best part of driving is discovering gratitude. I wouldn't want the life of the captains of industry we drive to and from airports; being a drunk family guy getting kicks from boffing the next-door neighbour's wife is a turn-off; and crazy hyper people for whom everything is a personal insult make me laugh.

Life is not perfect, and the sooner we accommodate that fact, the calmer we'll all be.

Which leads me to Mr Davie. Mr Davie is man who lives hereabouts, a man who retired to Florida when his wife passed away ten years ago. Like many men of his age, his life pretty well fell apart when the mother of his three children succumbed to cancer.

But he carried on, living in a simple old-style condo building, in a ground-floor place with a nice view of an artificial lake.

I met one of his sons first, about a year ago. All the kids (who are grown with children of their own) live in northern states, all separated by hundreds of miles. This son was a copper, a good guy, the sensible beating heart of the country. I drove him to the airport after a visit because his father took ill. Mr Davie recovered. The son and I connected.

Then, about two months ago, the daughter turned up. She arrived one Friday night, and I drove her to her father's place. All the way she texted, talked or emailed, a tribute to the power of 3-G networks. But she was super-pleasant, and took time to explain that she was taking her father back to her state the following Monday after a doctor's appointment, and that the news might not be good.

Assigned the job on Monday, I was trepidatious. But I needn't have worried. Mr Davie (my first actual meeting) was frail, but in good spirits. Maybe it's body language, but I liked him immediately. Although he talked but a little, he clearly knew about business, and life, and knew that life is a funny old journey.

He came back two weeks after that, with his youngest son. While the son fetched the luggage, Mr Davie and I had a good talk. He was in a wheelchair and tired from the journey. But he wanted to go home, to be in his own place.

The Boss hasn't heard since. I hope he never does. I like the idea of Mr Davie happily passing his days looking over the lake.

Mons Venus

Robert is a big man, not particularly tall, but with a substantial gut. It's more than a gut. It looks large enough to sustain life without Robert's internal utilities - blood supply and the like - but for now, it's still Robert's gut.

Midnight on Saturday night and Robert is at his usual place, directing traffic in the car park at Mons Venus. The small area in front and the smaller area to the side of the club are full, so newcomers park at the pizza place next door. I sense some secret arrangement for this, the kind of secret arrangement that surrounds strip clubs everywhere. Beneath the surface there's way more going on than you can see.

I turn up with my group of ten revelers in a stretch limousine. They're drunk: we have just come from the Seminole Hard Rock Casino and Hotel (to give it it's full title.) More accurately, the men are drunk. The women are variously between sobriety and sleep.

As my charges head off to ogle womanflesh, Robert approaches and introduces himself. Yes, we have met before, but I'm not sufficiently regular to merit a piece of his memory. He eyes me up and down, and politely requests a quick removal of my car-park-blocking hunk of metal. It's midnight, you see, peak time at a Tampa strip club, and it's no time for damn limousines to block things up.

Keeping out of the way is part of the driver's art. Robert quickly assesses that I am on his side, and helps make sure I don't scrape the beast while I am backing and filling. I end up in front of the pizza place, close enough to keep my people happy, far enough away to keep Robert happy.

One of my couples comes back to the limo. They don't want to pay the twenty dollar cover. Last time they were here, they say, women entered free. A sign of the times, I think. But he was in a mood, and wanted to play. I didn't tickle his funny bone, so he started with Robert. The man was a happy drunk, and wanted to make body contact. Rubbing elbows, elaborate ghetto handshakes, bear hugs. Everything was fair game. But then he started in a little too rough. I could see Robert's brain working, fighting the instinct to knock this dope to the pavement, overcoming that thought with the logic that he's just another idiot customer wanting to bond with his fellow man.

By wrestling the car-park guy at Mons Venus.

The couple decided they would pay the forty dollars to watch the girls inside, so left Robert and me behind. I watched Robert in the gaps between pages of my book. He had the look of a man who has seen much.

Venezuela

This weekend is awful for anyone flying from the east coast of the US to anywhere else. Snow in the form of blizzards shut airports from Washington DC (Dulles and Reagan National) to Boston Logan. The knock-on effect has been awesome in its scale.

Weather is one thing, but political stuff-ups are another. Planning to collect a customer from Miami International last night, I lobbed in the carpark at 8:30 for his 8:15 pm scheduled arrival. It always take a minimum of thirty minutes to clear immigration and customs at MIA, so I was in good time.

Too good a time, as the monitors now showed the flight from Venezuela arriving at 10:30 pm. Great. Two hours and fifteen minutes late.

My natural instinct is to work forward to get a rough idea of my "get to bed" hour. If he arrives at 10:30, thirty minutes for I and C, fifteen minutes faffing around getting to the car, three and a half hours to his house, get gas, clean interior of limo, return limo, drive home. 04:30. Yet more good news.

My customer was in decent humour, and we chatted about his day.

"Everything is rotten in Venezuela" he said, a native himself and so qualified to talk. "Nobody cares. It's a ruin".

After mulling on that for the drive back, my 4:30 am crawl into bed didn't seem so bad.

Late night chat

At 4:00 am this morning:

Does that include your tip?

No sir, it does not.

So you're telling me it doesn't include the tip?

That's correct, Todd.

I need to tip you then?

Only if you think my service merits it.

Oh. Yes. You're right. Here's fifty bucks. Are we good?

Thank you very much, that's very generous.





I'd like to see the server's reaction to a 3.5% tip next time he sups in a restaurant.

Season

The Season is in full flight now. The Tropical Midwest doubles in population, what with Snowbirds, tourists and those visiting friends and relatives.

Season is variably described as the period between Thanksgiving and Mother's Day, or from Halloween to Easter. You get the picture.

The way I describe it is more practical. More experiential, if you like. When it takes me more than twenty-five minutes to drive five miles, it's Season.

It's Season.

7-Eleven

Becoming a connoisseur of gas stations is one more benefit of driving limousines. Not just gas stations, but the convenience stores that accompany them are part of my extensive experience. Circle K, On the Run, am/pm; I have shopped and bought coffee in them all. The King of the Conveniences (here in the United States) is 7-Eleven, the store with the opening hours right in the name.

The green and red monster is now my service station of choice, because they seem to have the cheapest gasoline. I guess they have buying power over the distributors, being as big as they are, but it might also be that the fuel is a way to get you into their stores. The gas is a loss-leader so they can sell you lots of other crap.

And crap it is. My observation of my fellow 7-Eleven customer is that they are in a hurry, they smoke, they drink and they eat a rotten diet. We need to face facts and note that there is nothing - not one thing - in those stores that could be considered a nutritious foodstuff. It's all high-calorie, high fat, high carb, low end of the food-chain junk. And you have to line up to get some.

Horrible working hours, long days and an inability to eat on the job all make for some bad eating habits. That's my excuse for past explorations into the nether world of convenience store food, an apt description, because I am certain that much of the protein comes from the nether regions of animals. But I have forsworn that stuff in the interests of living beyond fifty.

The inescapable truth is this: Poor people pay the most for the worst food. That's just the way it is.




Also published here. [link]

First Time

A new customer is good for both me and The Boss. The benefit to The Boss is clear, but for me it's an opportunity to focus on what makes a good (or even, ahem, excellent) chauffeur.

Because we're minimum-wage folks, we work for tips, and the time-honored way to garner a good tip is to meet and exceed the customer's expectations. First impressions are as important as conventional wisdom suggests, so I am hyper-aware of making a good impression in those minutes immediately after meeting the new person.

But sometimes the relationship goes the other way. The customer can make a big impression on me, as happened Tuesday morning. Collecting the gentleman from his comfortable established home, I knew something was up when, after some perfunctory chit-chat, he said;

You know, Wombat, Tiger Woods has fucked it for the rest of us, that prick.

Firstly, use of the word 'fuck' puts me, the driver, on a different relationship footing with a customer. Secondly, what on earth was he talking about? After a second, I figured it out - he was telling me that he was an enthusiast for adultery.

Thus began an hour-long tour of this man's life, from his financial woes to his infidelities. He talked at length about his family, especially his many children and his many, many grandchildren. Retired from business, Facebook is his new enthusiasm, a marvel that allows him to keep up with his many widely distributed neices and nephews, although some of them "...find it a bit creepy" that he's so intent on being their friend.

But the focus of his thinking was his trips to Havana. My man could only be described as a part-time sex-tourist, waxing fond about his past visits to Cuba for the enthusiastic, fruity and cheap (cheap!) prostitutes. Apparently, once you find the right guy down there (a man he oddly referred to as "...my John...") all doors are open. John (or The John) knows the way around obstacles to free love created by the fact that "the government owns everything down there, you know". Which would be at least a partial description of a communist dictatorship.

Whenever someone decides to spill their guts to me, a perfect stranger, I wonder why. Is is because the Town Car has a kind of confessional effect? Am I like a priest because the customer cannot see my face? Or is it something about me that encourages them to tell all?

I'm going to ask this nice man soon, because he invited me to a week in Havana in February. We'll have time to talk then.




For a more detailed description of my new buddy's enthusiasms. [link]

Fast Cars

Today, after I collected my customer from Orlando Airport.

Wombat, how long do you think to my place?

Oh, with the traffic about two hours and fifteen.

Okay. I'm really keen to get home. If you do it in one hour forty-five, there's a hundred in it for you..........but, you know, don't lose your licence.


*bangs head against steering-wheel*